Painted sf & fantasy miniatures by Gerrie Schenck

The afternoon before christmas eve I made a long car-drive to the Netherlands to pick up a Christmas gift for my oldest daughter. I decided to kill the time listening to music, snapping some pictures of the snow landscape (which you can see below) and thinking about 2010...

These days blogs are full of plans and resolutions for the new year: people make plans for armies and projects they want to complete in 2010. And what will be up to? Honestly I don't know yet.

2009 was a year with very little painting time: my youngest daughter was born in December of 2008 so having two kids consumed most of my spare time last year. The time I had left for painting was mainly consumed by some lower quality paint work, such as my Ultramarines. The plan was to start playing Warhammer 40k again somewhere in November, but my army is still too small for that. I decided to keep on building my army until it's big enough to play a few games with more unit options, rather than having to field 1 HQ and 2 Tactical squads in my first games.

I finished only three showcase level pieces this year, of which only one is actually a serious attempt. In April I did the Infinity figure 'The Shrouded' (which I still didn't show on this blog I just noticed). This figure had been sitting on my desk for over a year, and I decided to finish it as a competition entry for the Red Devil painting competition over at MiniArtCon 09. The figure had some strong points, but some bits, like the armor were rushed and had too many mistakes on them. After the summer I finished two more showcase figures: an Infinity Naffatûn and a Confrontation Drune Red Karnagh. I'm very pleased about the Infinity, but it was rather an experiment: I used a lot of contrast and a zenithal lighting way of highlighting. Because of that it isn't as smooth as it was supposed to be, but it still looks good in my opinion. The Drune on the other hand is really a piece which is worth of participating in a painting competition. I'm very proud of it.

In 2009 my theme was "I paint what I want to paint", meaning whenever I wanted to quickly slap on some paint on a figure which is meant for gaming, do something experimental or paint up a showcase quality miniature, I simply did it. That's why 2009 was also full of projects which were left behind halfway and then picked up again afterwards. I had a great time painting, although it was so limited, but when I look back at 2009 I'm not completely happy about what I have achieved. It's basically a mishmash of miniatures and half-finished projects.

So for 2010 I will need to get things straight. I'm not 100% sure, but I think I will pick up serious showcase quality painting again next year. I have a lot of ideas in my head and a huge list of great miniatures I want to paint. But this will mean my Ultramarine army will have to wait a bit longer for their first battle.

Anyway happy holidays and I will probably be back early 2010 with a blog post on my plans for the new year, I just need a bit more time to think about it. I've also made a top-10 list of great painting related things of 2009, I'll publish these whenever I finish them. And I hope you enjoyed the pictures :)

And what are your plans for the new year? Please let me know by commenting.

As mentioned in previous posts (this one for example) I'm painting up a unit of Deathwing Terminators for the online painting competition at Bolter & Chainsword. Basecoating and shading is done on the unit. I've used quite some bits from the Dark Angels upgrade sprue together with some icons made with my green stuff press mold technique.